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Forum:Spoiler Expiration
How long does a piece of information remain a spoiler? When does a plot detail just become a part of the background story? I've noticed that Wikipedia policy discourages the use of spoiler warnings because it's generally expected that article subjects will be covered in detail. Don't get me wrong, I think a warning makes sense for unreleased content... but at what point does a plot overview just become a plot overview? -- Karm1c 21:37, February 17, 2010 (UTC) :For the most part, Spoilers are game-specific and do not expire. For example, when looking at a Mass Effect (the original) page, information from later in the game is always a spoiler, as well as information from Mass Effect 2. If looking at a Mass Effect 2 page, information from Mass Effect is not labeled as a spoiler. If looking at a page that is relevant to both games (like the character page for Garrus), spoiler warnings are listed for both games. These spoilers will not expire, because we take into account that people who come to this wiki aren't just looking for information that is a general overview about the game (like wikipedia). For the most part, people here are very interested in playing and enjoying this particular game, and want to be able to look up information about a specific character or quest without having the rest of the game spoiled for them :) --Lilliful 21:56, February 17, 2010 (UTC) ::But, isn't it obvious that the Mass Effect 2 section of the Garrus page would contain information about Garrus from Mass Effect 2? In that case, isn't a spoiler tag just redundant? -- Karm1c 22:29, February 17, 2010 (UTC) :::Sorry, that was a poor example on my part :( His page has zero spoiler tags. You're right that it would be redundant -- I was just trying to think of an article that might have both spoiler tags. In this case, the Save File Transfer article has both, because it talks about how the ending of Mass Effect can influence different things during Mass Effect 2. Is there an example of articles where you felt that the spoiler warning should have expired already? :) --Lilliful 22:49, February 17, 2010 (UTC) ::::For example, I've seen spoiler tags on most every character article, Garrus included (just above the Dossier sections for both ME1 and ME2), usually right before a section that says Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2. There's a spoiler on the Biotics page that doesn't seem to serve much purpose. -- Karm1c 23:14, February 17, 2010 (UTC) :::::Oh, you're right, there they are! I would assume those are placed where they are to differentiate between non-spoiler character information (class powers) and plot of that character, which makes sense, so that the user knows when to stop scrolling. As for the one on the biotics page, you're absolutely right, I have no idea why that is there. This is a wiki that's constantly being updated, so it's possible that tag got left hanging by someone when it was previously useful. In those cases, feel free to delete it, or if you're not sure, point it out on the talk page, and if nobody objects, then delete it. I was a bit confused by your question of "expiry" because I thought you were inquiring as to whether, in a couple of months, we could start removing some spoiler tags, but it seems your question has more to do with superfluous tags that never should have existed in the first place. I'm removing the one on the biotics page :) --Lilliful 23:35, February 17, 2010 (UTC) ::::::It is rather overdone here, and I've been steadily trying to remove the more egregious examples (marking a section called "Walkthrough" as a spoiler…). It's a judgment call for the most part, though. --DRY 04:33, February 18, 2010 (UTC)